New Book Illustrates Italy’s Abandoned Architecture

An inside look at Incompiuto: The Birth of a Style. Image courtesy of Humboldt Books.
An inside look at Incompiuto: The Birth of a Style. Image courtesy of Humboldt Books.

Incompiuto Siciliano, from the Italian for “unfinished”, is “…the most prominent Italian architectural style since WWII”, according to Humboldt Books, the publisher of Incompiuto: The Birth of a Style. A team spent ten years documenting half-completed and never-finished infrastructure projects from the Italian Alps to Sicily. The stunning collection of photographs makes the case for Incompiuto, not as series of independent failures, but as a distinct architectural movement – albeit an unintentional one.

Alterazioni Video, the art group behind Incompiuto, was founded in Milan in the early 2000s. Comprised of members Paololuca Berbieri Marchi, Alberto Caffarelli, Matteo Erenbourg, Andrea Masu, and Giacomo Porfiri, the group is a frequent contributor to international modern art exhibitions. In 2010, the collective organized a “Festival of the Unfinished” in Giarre, Sicily, to illuminate the contemporary ruins created by short-sighted local politicians.

With nearly 700 photographs of this “new” style complied in one place, Incompiuto: The Birth of a Style is an eye-opening look at modern Italian architecture.

– Joe Powers

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